Blocking Bitcoin Mining Apps

[damienbarrett]

It's come to my attention that some of my...ahem...industrious...ahem...students have been installing Bitcoin-mining software on their MacBook Airs. Never mind that it would take *ages* for a mining app to actually generate a single bitcoin, this is clearly in violation of our AUP, which states that our 1:1 laptops not be used for any commercial purpose or gain.

So I've been researching which Bitcoin mining apps exist for OS X and have been adding them to our restricted process list.

• Asteroid.app
• Bitcoin-Qt.app
• cgminer for Mac OS X.app
• Electrum.app
• guiminer.app
• Hive.app
• MacMiner.app
• Qt Bitcoin Trader.app

Note that this will not block a Java-based bitcoin-mining app like DiabloMiner or BitMinter, but it's a start.

Like P2P filesharing apps, these mining and wallet apps are prolific and ever-changing. There may even be one or two I'm unaware of, but I consider this a good start. Please contribute or comment to this thread if you know of any others.

Sidenote: adding these apps now puts my Restricted Process list at over 50 apps. Whee!

[tcam]

Thank you for passing on this info!

BTW do you use google docs? I started putting a list together for apps to block by category. seems like a group of mac admins can put a list together faster then one.

[lisacherie]

Thank you for sharing!
I think a lot of us are blocking similar apps.. Please vote this up if you agree.
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=21

[tkimpton]

Please use the </> to insert a URL. Can be quite difficult on an ios device trying to copy the link. Thanks

[bajones]

@damienbarrett The app bundles you've listed are mostly just different GUI front-ends for the same background "miner" processes. The two most common ones would be "cgminer" and "bfgminer". I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I see most frequently. If you block these two, it should render any new mining GUI applications unusable.

[ClassicII]

thanks for posting

Not to mention that the machine can be destroyed with the amount processing it puts on the air's GPU.

[ImAMacGuy]

hmm.. just as a heads up, don't restrict "Hive" as the process name, apparently it interferes with Archive Utility.app :)

oops.

[IGHOR]

Qt Bitcoin Trader is open source app and it does not mine https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcointrader/ https://github.com/JulyIGHOR/QtBitcoinTrader
You downloaded fake application. So please remove Qt Bitcoin Trader.app from your list and use official applications only.

[bajones]

Trading currencies on an institutionally owned device still violates a majority of AUPs. Most places frown on using their equipment for a personal profit.

[tcam]

I've been thinking about putting together a google doc for this kind of thing. would any one be interested in contributing to such a google doc if there was one?

[damienbarrett]

@IGHOR, I'm also blocking bitcoint wallet programs, for precisely the reason that @bajones][/url references. We can't have our students using their school-issued laptops to trade in questionable currencies.

Yes, @tcam][/url, I would definitely contribute to a Google Doc. I'm discovering new apps all the time.

I'd love to see a pre-defined list included in Casper as a good starting place for admins. I know there's a feature request already in place.

[Ted]

Here is the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnYSbslSOGbidDBoeHV6SVgtTnFjTXRHbkpqTHFVN0E&usp=sharing

To be get editing access to the document:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LToukBv_vZs2Fmq8_5suG61QyRjHxn5vUMld09_VCgI/viewform